the least of your worries is the taxman. the rules are now different, i no longer run a private fund, i run a public trust. so i don't advise individuals. not anymore. but it didn't matter anyway. the abhorrence of taxes made people bemoan the fact that they were paying taxes and their portfolios had shifted from being deeply in the black to dripping with red ink. i'm sure those people have subsequently left the stock market entirely. you can't blame them. i made a second series of widely reviled calls. people made the same chatter, they sat back and enjoyed the run, they didn't want to listen to some guy saying you had to preserve your capital and take out what you needed for the next five years. they were concerned that so much of it would go to the u.s. government if they took the money off the table. even as the feds subsequently slashed the tax rate for capital gains from 2000, they just wanted to stay the course. i get that. in both cases you would have saved 40 to 57% of your capital if you had listened to the sell an